Article Text
Abstract
Coronavirus-19 (COVID-19) caused by SARS-CoV-2 has become a global pandemic. Risk of transmission may occur during endoscopy and the goal is to prevent infection among healthcare professionals while providing essential services to patients. Asia was the first continent to have a COVID-19 outbreak, and this position statement of the Asian Pacific Society for Digestive Endoscopy shares our successful experience in maintaining safe and high-quality endoscopy practice at a time when resources are limited. Sixteen experts from key societies of digestive endoscopy in Asia were invited to develop position statements, including patient triage and risk assessment before endoscopy, resource prioritisation and allocation, regular monitoring of personal protective equipment, infection control measures, protective device training and implementation of a strategy for stepwise resumption of endoscopy services after control of the COVID-19 outbreak.
- endoscopy
- clinical decision making
This is an open access article distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited, appropriate credit is given, any changes made indicated, and the use is non-commercial. See: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/.
Statistics from Altmetric.com
Footnotes
SK and FKLC are joint senior authors.
Twitter @dghewett
Contributors PWYC, SCN and FKLC contributed to the formulation of statements, coordination of the expert endoscopists and drafting of the manuscript. HI, DNR, ELH, JYC, LH, DGH, H-MC, RR, H-PW, SHH, DWS, K-LG and HT are expert endoscopists who commented on the statements and manuscript. FKLC and SK are co-senior authors and act as guarantors.
Funding The authors have not declared a specific grant for this research from any funding agency in the public, commercial or not-for-profit sectors.
Competing interests SK is president of the Asian Pacific Society of Digestive Endoscopy (APSDE); HT is vice president of APSDE; PWYC, H-PW, RR, SHH are serving as councillors of APSDE.
Patient and public involvement Patients and/or the public were not involved in the design, or conduct, or reporting, or dissemination plans of this research.
Patient consent for publication Not required.
Provenance and peer review Not commissioned; internally peer reviewed.
Data availability statement There are no data in this work.